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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

What man is looking for

I am always puzzled at the passing of a great person and the large amounts of adulation that ensues.

Like Nelson Mandela in South Africa now, or when Jack Layton, leader of the NDP party in Canada, died two years ago.

I understand that in some cases, the people who died have done great things. We feel sorry that they are no longer with us here on earth.

I could take a day or two or three of hearing about what people perceived as their good works. And yes we need to mourn them. I understand all this.

What I am talking about is not the normal mourning we all must pass through at a death of a loved one. It is this seeming need to put them on par with a deity. To adore them, to worship them, to make them something that they never were and never could be.

All of us on earth are mere humans. With virtues yes, but we are frail and imperfect. It is normal upon a death to ignore those imperfections. We all do it because we need to remember our loved ones for their goodness. And when an average person dies we mourn them in a healthy way. I don't think we do this well when the person is famous.

We make them out to be something they are not. I think people do this because they are looking for something to believe in. And they can't find it. I don't think they even know they are looking for something to believe in. When someone great dies, people feel they have permission to publicly mourn even if they never knew the person or if that person made no difference to their lives.

Often times the public person who dies has values that are far different from our own. Do the public mourners think about this? I don't know.

So many people have given up on God. It is tragic that this is true. God is pure Goodness, and pure Love. He is the one that people are looking for. They just don't seem to know it.